The Wet Parade

The Wet Parade
Directed by	Victor Fleming
Written by	John Lee Mahin
Based on	The Wet Parade 1931 novel by Upton Sinclair
Produced by	Hunt Stromberg
Starring	Jimmy Durante Myrna Loy Robert Young Walter Huston
Cinematography	George Barnes
Edited by	Anne Bauchens
Music by	Dr. William Axt
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	March 26, 1932 (1932-03-26)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Wet Parade is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Robert Young, Myrna Loy, Walter Huston, Lewis Stone and Jimmy Durante.^[1] It is based on the 1931 novel by Upton Sinclair. It shows how two families are devastated by the effects of alcohol and Prohibition. In addition to the main story, many small vignettes illustrate the theme, from the hotel resident who breakfasts on beer to the New York cabbies who all carry guns to protect themselves from bootleggers. A 3-minute segment documents the many steps in the creation of counterfeit imported liquor, from cracking open tins of poisonous denatured alcohol, to dunking burlap-bundled bottles in salt water and dirt (simulating a sea voyage), to the permanent blinding of a customer. When the picture was released in March 1932, Prohibition had been law for almost 13 years and would not end until December 5, 1933, with the passage of the 21st Amendment.

Plot[]

1916, we meet the Chilcotes of Louisiana. In their elite circles, no one is surprised that the men are all drunk after an elegant dinner. Maggie May looks after her father, tying his shoes for him and retrieving him when he makes a spectacle of himself in public. “I'm just a low down cowardly drunkard,” he tells her. Chilcote goes on a drinking and gambling spree and loses most of the family's money. In the agonies of withdrawal, he kills himself. After the funeral, his friends toast him; Maggie smashes the whiskey decanter, raging: “I hope I live to see the day that every bit that was ever made was poured into the cesspool where it belongs.”

Maggie's brother, Roger Jr., a writer, moves to New York City when his novel is accepted. His college friend, newspaper reporter Jerry Tyler, gets him a room in the modest hotel where he lives. Like Chilcote, Pow Tarleton wasted the family resources; now his wife, Bertha and their son, Kip, manage this place. Pow stumps for Woodrow Wilson's re-election campaign, for the free drinks as well as the politics.

Wilson is re-elected; people chant “Four years more, we stay out of the War.” Cut to American troops marching, sailing, fighting. Jerry enlists. In the trenches, the men around him wonder if they'll even get a beer when they get home. The war ends, and in 1919, the 18th amendment becomes law, despite President Wilson's veto.

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Maggie May comes to the hotel to meet her brother, and a flirtatious Pow shows her to Roger's room, assuming she is a prostitute. Kip runs upstairs to throw her out and is shattered when he learns the truth. Roger staggers in, with Jerry. They have been celebrating Jerry's return. When Roger pours a toast, they discover that Pow has replaced all of Roger's liquor with water. Maggie May realizes that she and Kip have been fighting the same battle, and they warm to each other. She and Roger go to relatives on Long Island, supposedly far from temptation.

June 29, 1919. People stock up on liquor and try to drink their fill before midnight. Cut to a lavish party thrown by the Chilcote's cousins, whose bar is stocked by a boat from Bermuda. Roger is smitten with actress Eileen Pinchon. Kip and Maggie dance, but Kip leaves after the snobbish cousins high-hat him.

Bertha tries to take a bottle of bad liquor away from Pow. When it breaks, he beats her to death while she screams that it is Prohibition now.. Maggie comforts the devastated Kip. Pow is sentenced to life imprisonment..

Kip does not renew the lease on the hotel, leaving some guests wondering how to move the liquor stored in their rooms. Maggie May comforts Kip. “Bootleg booze, that's what killed my Mom,” he sobs. He is stunned when she confesses her love for him. They marry, and Kip joins the U.S. Treasury Department.

His boss, the Major, doesn't believe in Prohibition but will enforce it, with only a fraction of the resources needed. He gives Kip a partner, Abe Schilling, a quirky, experienced agent. In a bar, they watch teenagers getting drunk. Their cover is blown, and they are beaten and thrown out. A crook warns Kip that bootleggers are forming an association. Maggie tells Kip she is pregnant.

The gangsters do organize, all over the country, with systems of bribery and terror—and the financial backing of “honest” businessmen. Cut to Eileen Pinchon's speakeasy—a glamorous nightclub patronized by celebrities. Abe announces a raid, and the cops smash everything. Roger, a big investor in his mistress's club, is shaken. The bellboy promises some “real prewar Kentucky bourbon.” Cut to a sequence showing the process of creating innumerable counterfeits—using denatured alcohol. Roger wakes up sick and blind, and Eileen runs away. The ophthalmologist says that they have had hundreds of cases like this since Prohibition. Some bootleggers don't remove the methyl put in the alcohol to make it undrinkable. There is no hope. Roger moves in with Kip and Maggie and learns Braille.

Kip promises justice for Roger. The Major signs the warrant but says it is futile, expounding on the failures of Prohibition. Maggie goes into labor, and Kip is kidnapped from the hospital by gangsters who plan to make his horrible death a warning. Abe saves him but is shot; he dies in Kip's arms, telling him to quit the department because it isn't any use, and taking care of his family comes first. At the hospital, Kip looks at his tiny son, “born into an awful mess...Before they pull him into it, I guess they'll have it all figured out.”

Cast[]

• Walter Huston as Pow Tarleton
• Wallace Ford as Jerry Tyler
• Dorothy Jordan as Maggie May Chilcote
• Robert Young as Kip Tarleton
• Lewis Stone as Roger Chilcote
• Neil Hamilton as Roger Chilcote, Jr.
• Jimmy Durante as Abe Schilling
• Myrna Loy as Eileen Pinchon

Production[]

The AFI catalog states that MGM paid $18,000^[2] ($287,000 in 2020) for the rights to Upton Sinclair's novel. TCM says that the price was $20,000^[3] ($319,000 in 2020).

In the book, Kip is killed, and Maggie May, already a speaker against "Demon Rum", issues a call to arms to the women of America to rally for enforcement, financial support and community action. The book ends with her slogan: Prohibition hasn't failed! Prohibition hasn't been tried! Try it!^[4]

Near the end of the picture, the Major sums up the failure of Prohibition:

"The whole business grows more like a farce each day. It costs the government $50 million a year to enforce the law, and where are we? There's more alcohol being made in this country than ever before. 36,000 places in this town where men and women and 17-year-old kids get drunk. More speakeasies than there were saloons and what's more, the otherwise law-abiding citizen won’t put down a bottle until it's empty. Simply because we're trying to force a law down their throat they don’t want.” Kip says things were pretty bad before and the Major replies, “They got good liquor then and they didn’t have to dodge machine gun bullets when they went walking on Sundays."

Reception[]

On April 22, New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall criticized the film for being too long but praised all the major performances. Speaking to an audience still firmly immersed in Prohibition, he wrote:

"Possibly one of the best episodes is that revealing the making of intoxicating drinks in this city. There is the printing of labels of all sorts, the pouring of denatured alcohol into barrels, the filling of bottles, the corking machine, sticking labels on bottles, clamping the tinfoil over the corks, the stamping of "Canada" on gunnysacks, wetting the sacks, passing them through salt; and then, after they are filled with a dozen bottles, they are sewn up and ready for the unfortunate consumer. Certainly this is enough to make many fight shy of bootlegged whisky."^[5]

Leonard Maltin gives the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, calling it "Strange but interesting."^[6]

Introducing the film in February 2020, Eddie Muller called it "an unusual mix of historical documentary, family melodrama and crime movie."

References[]

External links[]

• The Wet Parade at IMDb
• The Wet Parade at AllMovie
• The Wet Parade at the TCM Movie Database
• The Wet Parade at the American Film Institute Catalog